Dick's Sporting Goods to anchor redevelopment of Home Depot site

Friday

Aug 1, 2014 at 7:00 AM

By Brian.VanOchten@hollandsentinel.com(616) 546-4279

The old Home Depot site is getting a whole new identity.The 113,000-square-foot retail site in Holland Township, which remained unoccupied for the past 3˝ years, is undergoing a radical transformation into a Dick’s Sporting Goods anchor store and five other tenants. The redevelopment project promises to bring dozens of new jobs to the area.“The Home Depot had sat vacant for quite some time. So, it’s nice to see retailers going into an existing building instead of going into undeveloped acres of the township,” Holland Township Interim Community Development Director Meghann Reynolds said.The site was purchased by Hutton Development Group of Chattanooga, Tenn., and is being prepared by crews from Fulcrum Construction of Atlanta and GDK Construction of Holland.The Home Depot store opened in 2006, but shut down after a little more than four years in business.A site plan obtained by The Sentinel shows the first Dicks Sporting Good franchise in Holland is expected to occupy 59,642 square feet in the middle of the redevelopment project.The site also will be the home of three more national retailers entering the Holland market — Home Goods, Five Below and rue21 — and a fresh spot for Maurice’s women’s fashions.A sixth space, located on the north end of the redevelopment project, still has not been filled.“A shiny, new store is always an exciting thing,” said Alisha Balch, store manager of Maurice’s at Westshore Mall. “I’m excited personally about it. I think a change of scenery would be good for our store. Maurice’s does really well in strip centers. We prefer to be in strip centers instead of malls.”GDK is handling site preparations for the Home Goods and Maurice’s spaces. Home Goods will occupy 21,280 square feet, while Maurice’s will occupy 4,600 square feet.“We’re just turning the space into boxes for other tenants,” GDK Project Manager Jim Hoekstra said of his firm’s involvement in the project. “We’re not doing anything inside. We’re just building the shell around it.”Fulcrum Construction is preparing the spaces for Five Below, a discount store with everything priced from $1 to $5, rue21, a girls’ fashion store and a sixth unnamed retailer at the far north end of the project. It’ll also handle the buildout of interior spaces for all of the stores.The storefronts for Five Below (8,000 square feet), rue21 (5,000) and sixth retail spot (5,000) are being constructed in the previous Home Depot outdoor garden center space.The rear section of the old Home Depot site also is being shortened to make room for shipping and receiving docks for the retail outlets. It involved knocking out some of the block walls.Hutton, which did not return calls seeking comment, has not announced a target date for completing the project.— Follow this reporter on Twitter @BizHolland.